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The Changing Web

Fascinatingly, to me, anyway, while many of us prefer to concentrate on design, content, and experience, it continues to be necessary to remind our work comrades (or inform younguns) about web standards, accessibility, and progressive enhancement. When a site like Facebook stops functioning when a script forgets to load, that is a failure of education and understanding, and all of us have a stake in reaching out to our fellow developers to make sure that, in addition to the new fancy tricks they’ve mastered, they also learn the basics of web standards, without which our whole shared system implodes.

This doesn’t mean “go be an HTML guru.” It does mean cherish the lessons of the recent past, and share them with those who missed them (or missed the point). Wisdom is not a job, but it is always an asset.

If we view the average web worker’s skill stack as a cake (this kind of cake – opens in a new window), at least two of those layers are HTML and CSS. You can make that third layer and icing out of whatever you’d like: design, UX, accessibility, etc. And guess what, you can change that or add layers. It’s the web! Fluidity and flexibility mean something around here, but you’ll always need those two layers of HTML and CSS. They form your base and will serve you well. The rest is up to you. Do your best to welcome change, in technology and yourself.